Gen Con

In a press release sent out today, Gen Con announced that they expect attendee badges for the 2018 show to sell out. If you are looking to get to the convention this summer, be sure to grab your badges soon!

Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! An early preview season for M:TG due to a theft, a new Shadowrun video game may be on the horizon, BattleTech gets a YA fiction series, an updated Empyrea announcement, and more!

Hello everyone, Darryl here with help me help me we went from no news to too much news and I don’t know what to do! Gen Con, Diana Jones, ENnies, highly anticipated products released, all new products and licenses announced, it’s just too much!

While at Gen Con, I had the opportunity to briefly meet with James Sutter, the Creative Director for the new Starfinder game from Paizo Publishing, as well as the co-creator of the Pathfinder role-playing game. We met in the first hour of the con, before Starfinder sold out, when the press of bodies at the convention was trying to get to the Paizo booth and grab their copies of the game. Moving along the line of people waiting to pay for their copies was Sutter, moving along the line with a pen in hand to sign the copies of anyone who wanted a signature. He talked with everyone, and laughed with many.

While flying home from Gen Con on Monday, the convention released its attendance numbers for the Best Four Days In Gaming. If you were there at the convention, you knew there were a lot of people there. The place was busy, there were big crowds lining up at the door each day to get in when the exhibitor's hall would open up, and sales are off the charts. Paizo sold through their run of Starfinder on the first day (by 2pm I have heard). Green Ronin sold through their daily allotment of the D&D 5E setting books made in conjunction with Geek And Sundry'sCritical Role channel every day. By Saturday, Modiphius had sold through their copies of ENnies Award winning game Tales From The Loop. Everyone that I spoke with had great sales throughout the weekend, although a few did suffer from being in the hinterlands of a much larger than before exhibition hall.

At Gen Con this year, there is a gaming museum (if you're at the convention, head on over to the Lucas Oil Stadium) set inside a replica of the Horticultural Hall in which the first ever Gen Con took place. Amongst many historic gaming delights, you'll see there a plaque designed by Alex Gygax and Larry Elmore, dedicated to Gary Gygax, who founded Gen Con and co-created Dungeons & Dragons. Photo courtesy of Gail Gygax and the Gygax Memorial Fund.

Day One of Gen Con has come and gone, and honestly it is already nearly a blur. So many people, so many new things, and so many bright shiny things. The reports that I heard was that there are 60-70,000 people in attendance at the con. I took that picture yesterday about an hour before the opening of the exhibition hall.

Lost Tales of Myth Drannor is an official D&D Adventurers League book containing six adventures for characters of levels 1-20. It is billed as a promo for Gen Con's 50th anniversary, although it will eventually appear on the DMs Guild -- from DDAL's Greg Marks: "It is a book that is a promo for GC50 and cons the admins are invited to. It will eventually appear on the DMsGuild."

In advance to their September Kickstarter launch, John Wick Presents will be having a limited number of print copies of their Khitai Quickstart available on their booth at Gen Con (booth 2338). The Quickstart features seven new nations, mechanics overview, new sorceries and an adventure, The Song of the World. The Quickstart will also be made available on DriveThruRPG after Gen Con on preparation for the 7th Sea: The East Kickstarter campaign.

EN World Reviews

Dry erase boards. Flip mats. Graph paper. Lego. Theater of the Mind. All of these are valid, tried-and-true methods of tracking movement/combat in Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs. While I've employed all of these in the past, nothing has worked better for my games than the dungeon tile.

Here at EN World, I'mlookingatall-agestabletoprole-playinggames, board games, andcard games. Do they engage the players at the kids' gaming table? Would they cut it at the adults' table? Are they genuinely fun for every age? Amazing Tales is "a game for children who love adventures". Martin Lloyd's RPG is designed for a GM and one or two young players, and includes the rules, GM tips for young gamers, four settings with adventure hooks, and more.

The campaign that our group will be starting next week (and that I wrote a little bit about here last week) got me to thinking about martial arts role-playing games in general. I am probably by no means an aficionado of martial arts movies, or media, but I have enjoyed some Chinese martial arts films over the years (my first college roommate was/is a martial artist and fan of the movies). Plus, I am more of a fan of contemporary settings, and unfortunately the number of games that combine these two things are few. However, today I am going to talk about the Tianxia: Blood, Silk and Jade role-playing game from Jack Norris and Vigilance Press.

In Mythras, player characters are tied to family, village, and cults and their quests change the world around them and influence the direction of society’s growth. Mythras is mythic in scope and the PCs create legends with their adventures. This review covers a newcomer’s overall impression of Mythras.

Welcome to the Cypher System Creator Roundup! Unlocked during Monte Cook Games’Worlds of the Cypher SystemKickstarter campaign, the Cypher System Creator program is an option to distribute and/or sell official Cypher System crowd-sourced content. Setup within DriveThruRPG and RPGNow, the model is similar to the Storyteller’s Vault (World of Darkness), and the Explorer’s Society (7th Sea) in that individual creators can share their Cypher System content as long as it conforms to the content guidelines for the program, which can be found here.